ElectroEd

Ayal Rosenberg

Tangible, electronic-music instruments – designed for children – can create more joyful and meaningful music experiences at early ages. Allowing children to easily create, play and educate themselves through experience and immersion.

Description

Creative outlet and joyful learning are the true jet-engines for a young child’s well being. The faster children will be allowed to create and “jam”, the deeper the experience goes (just like their quest for language). At young ages, traditional music education and instruments are maintaining a great distance between competence and actual creation. This leads to anxiety and boredom with most kids, and creates this unjustified natural-selection based on talent and pushy parents. Electronic music instruments (such as sequencers, drum machines, loop machines), are perfect tools for achieving the goal of a joyful, fulfilling and effective music-learning experience, and are typically not marketed to young children nor offered as valid beginning instruments.
I have made two prototypes of Music-tech instruments that incorporate the ideas of helping kids (ages 6-9) encounter music in a fun, immersive and empowering way.
The elements on which I based my designs are – simplicity, tangibility, sense-of-success, and the lack of the screen(avoiding overstimulation). For years, the field of electronic-music instruments has been growing and developing along a billion dollar industry of music production and R&D labs. Why shouldn’t kids be a part of the audience (and practitioners)? Do electronic beats and sounds suit only the palette of a “sophisticated” adult mind? What could happen if kids will get access to the realm of electronic instruments?
Our fear that this is too-easy and too-quick an access to music, and that kids need to learn hardship in order to become a creative person and an artist, is passé, condescending and egotistical. My research shows, that the demand for traditional instruments will rise after children will gain more positive and empowering music-experiences at young ages.With ElectroED, I create a tool that allows children to access music creation in a way that is creative and fulfilling.

Classes

Thesis

Thesis Presentation Video